Ten Reasons to Stay ((The Risky Hearts Duet) Book 1)

by Candace Knoebel

  When I felt her still, I looked up. “What is it?”

  She held up an envelope, her face masked in a mixture of emotions. “It’s from Jack,” she said, her voice distant.

  It had been so long since I heard his name. Since I’d even thought about him. He was a person from another lifetime. One who didn’t fit in the new world we’d created together.

  She opened it. “For Corinne,” she read, and my stomach tensed up. “The rumors of your marriage have been the center of every conversation I find myself in. I’ll admit, it’s weird hearing others talk about the wedding of the year, knowing you used to be mine. I debated sending this letter to you, but how could I not when it’s your big day? I know you’ve moved on and are happy. For that, I’m grateful.

  “I just wanted you to know that I love you. A part of me always will. And I’m happy for you. Truly. I wish you both nothing but the best. I… I find myself smiling from time to time, knowing that if it wasn’t for me… he wouldn’t have found you. I hope that somewhere down the road, our paths will align again. That we’ll all be able to grab a beer or something and laugh about what was. Until then, Jack.”

  She sat the paper down, tears in her eyes.

  “That was nice,” I said, feeling an odd sense of relief.

  She nodded.

  “Though, the part about him taking the credit…”

  “Typical Jack,” she said, laughing as she swiped the tears from her eyes.

  “Yes. Very typical.”

  She picked up the letter, tucked it back into its envelope, and then marked his name down on the list for thank-you letters before setting it aside.

  I felt the door shut then. Sealed tight, never to reopen. She was mine. Fully and completely.

  Leaning over, I kissed her. Rubbed my thumb over her cheek.

  “I needed to hear that,” she admitted. “I needed to know he was okay.”

  “I know, babe.”

  “I love you.”

  I smiled. “Love you more.”

  Chapter 35

  Corinne

  My phone buzzed on my desk, buried beneath hundreds of papers. All plans for the many clients I would soon be meeting with. My business was flourishing, the touch I brought to people’s homes trending with the spring air.

  I’d never felt so fulfilled in my life. So at peace as I helped couples build their forever homes. Digging through the papers, I finally found my phone. It was a message from Cole.

  Hey, gorgeous. I bet you’re hot.

  I rolled my eyes, grinning. Thank you for the compliments, but I’m afraid this was a bad idea. Hope you find your match, I replied, playing into his game.

  Don’t rush off, he said a moment later, reminding me of those first messages that brought us together.

  Where are you?

  He pinged me his address.

  Be there soon, I said, pulling my purse out of the drawer.

  “Mace,” I called, still smiling as I shook my head. He was crazy, and I loved every second of it.

  Macy poked her head into the room, appearing a bit frazzled. “Yeah?”

  “I’m going to head out for a bit.”

  “Okay,” she said, glancing back down at her phone. “The couple who wants their kitchen remodeled will be here at four thirty.”

  “I’ll be back before then,” I said with a small smile.

  Macy had moved into the city months ago, and I’d put her straight to work. It was nice, being together again. I could rely on her in ways I couldn’t with my other employees. She thrived as a manager, running the shop upfront, upselling the hell out of all my personal pieces.

  Pulling up my GPS, I followed the directions that led me into Central Park. This was a usual thing for us, meeting various times during the day at different spots. He liked to keep me on my toes, show me a new part of the city every chance he could.

  I turned the directions off the moment I realized where he was.

  I found him on the bridge, staring out into the water. He twisted when I walked up to him.

  “I missed you,” he said, pulling me into a hug.

  I giggled. “I just saw you three hours ago.”

  “That’s too long,” he said against my hair.

  I swatted at his chest. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

  “Crazy for you.”

  He pulled me closer and spun me around, dancing with me like he did that first day. “Hey,” he said, dipping me low, planting a small kiss on my neck.

  “Hi,” I said, smiling, love pouring from my soul.

  As we spun, I felt everything aligning, fate letting out a long overdue sigh. All that we had been through could be traced back to this moment. When the choice to be his had been made. When the rules had been set in place underneath the New York sky.

  And there we were, back where we started, only this time, there were no rules. Nothing keeping us from each other. We had overcome the impossible.

  In that moment, I realized that every phase of our life came with change, and different people fit into those pockets of change for different reasons. Some were there to hurt us, which thickened our shells. Some were there to build us up, lifting our pride. Some were there only briefly to open our eyes, bringing back the magic we lost.

  It was okay to love and to lose. It was okay to love and let go. It was also okay to love and move on.

  “So… what now?” he asked, pulling me against his chest, rocking me back and forth to the sounds of the birds chirping. “You have your business. I have mine. We have a perfect love. What’s next?”

  “Kids?” I asked, holding my breath.

  He swooped me up in his arms, holding me against his chest. “Kids it is. Taxi,” he yelled jokingly as he dashed forward, carrying me to our next adventure.

  The end.

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  1

  R E P R E S S E D

  Break me in half and mold me back together.

  Slit me and watch me bleed love.

  Aching.

  I’m aching to feel.

  HIS KISS STILL HAUNTED ME.

  I sat my noteook on the bed, water still dripping from my hair as my old professor’s words beat through my mind.

  Bleed your thoughts onto paper and one day they’ll come to life.

  I glanced at the checkered cover hiding my most-weighted thoughts and grunted. Yeah, like a hot man with large hands and a large… ego… will just appear from some pathetic, desperate scribble and fill in for my hands in the shower.

  As soon as I’d felt the words, I rushed out to write them, cheeks pink from steam and unfulfilled pleasure. I left them pulsing beneath the cover, begging to be breathed in by the one person I knew would understand them.

  Desire is a swollen bud between my thighs.

  Spread me and make me bloom.

  Dean’s face appeared in my mind. It always did. His smile that curved like the moon and held just as many secrets, his eyes that always felt like home, and his mutual love for the written word.

  He was a forbidden ghost that drifted inside my memories, rattling the tarnished chains of my regrets.

  Heat flooded my face and chest as I picked up the notebook and closed my eyes, retracing the feel of his lips against mine, just as I had in the shower. His rough, calloused hands sliding up my shirt. His breath, minty and hot against my neck…

  The voice in the back of my head stirred. No, Andy. You can’t think of him like that.

  With a dejected sigh, I hid the book beneath my oversized pile of unmentionables… underwear no man had seen since, well, since before I knew what an epidural was.

  Ever since I could remember, words had always danced in my mind. Paper and pen had always been as important to me as breathing. And if I wasn’t writing them down, I was scribbling my thoughts in the air with my finger, just so they could have a home outside my brain, because the words never stopped coming.

  Except I was blocked,
unable to form those words into a cohesive story. The story I’d always wanted to write. The story everyone said I was destined to tell.

  “Mom, I can’t find the remote,” Charlie called from outside my room.

  I tried to hop closer to the door, struggling to get my black stockings over my legs and catching a glimpse of myself in the closet mirror.

  I looked like an abnormal kangaroo on crack.

  “Check the coffee table,” I shouted once I was within earshot. I turned back to the mirror, still trying to get the material over my thighs when my feet tangled. This isn’t going to end well, I thought as I toppled over onto the edge of my bed, face-first. “Damn it,” I muttered into the sheets.

  My entire body went icicle-still when Charlie’s laughter filled the room. It took me a solid, panicked second to realize it was just the recording of his voice on my alarm giving the thirty-minute warning to get my butt ready and out the door. Money wasn’t going to make itself. But I was running late. Like always. Too many thoughts danced in the wind to ever be on time.

  Grunting, I flopped over like a seal and got a firm grip on the tights, determined to win this game of tug-o-war. Once they were over my hips, I slipped into a pair of high-waisted shorts and a lacy crop top, which my boss required. Anything to stand out from the strip of bars and clubs his place was nestled in between.

  “Mom?” Charlie’s voice was right outside my door.

  After slipping into my boots, I adjusted my clothes and grabbed a hair tie, grateful a messy bun was hip because it was all I’d time for.

  “Hey,” I said as soon as I opened the door. A smile spread over my lips. “Did you find it?”

  He nodded, blue eyes sparkling, and then looked down. My heart shriveled when his shoulders crooked forward. It was that time again. The moment we dreaded every Wednesday. I wished I could shield him from it, but I couldn’t because his father took me for every penny I had in court.

  “Does he have to come over?” Charlie asked. He always asked.

  I still felt tiny shockwaves of anger when thinking about Matt visiting Charlie. He’d been in and out of his life from the beginning, but only recently decided he was going to put the time he was awarded by the judge to use.

  I brushed the auburn hair that had fallen against his forehead back and looked him in the eyes. “He’s your father, Charlie. And he’s trying. He’s really trying this time. We have to give him a chance.”

  Those words felt like acid on my tongue because they were lies I was forced to tell when the judge told me I couldn’t have full custody. That I had to share my boy with a man who had a new personality for every day of the week.

  Words bubbled in my mind.

  Strip me down.

  Steal my shadows.

  Charlie sighed as his ten-year-old eyes sullenly clouded over.

  My heart was stuck in an endless loop of shattering, unable to mend or keep the cycle from repeating.

  “It just feels weird calling him Dad when I don’t feel like he’s my dad.”

  “I know, buddy.” I pulled him into a hug. “You don’t have to say it if you don’t want to.”

  He grunted. “If I don’t, he gets mad.”

  I squeezed him hard, wishing I could change things for him. Knowing the only way was to go back in time and keep myself from ever sleeping with Matt. But if I did that, I wouldn’t have Charlie.

  I was too selfish to give Charlie up.

  There was a swift, hard knock on the front door. We looked up.

  I wonder which version of Matt we’ll be blessed with today?

  “I’ll be watching The Weather Channel,” Charlie said, something he’d done for the past year. His interests had switched from obsessing over Pokémon, to needing to know everything about the barometric pressures, wind shear, and any other meteorological term that popped up on his radar.

  He trudged to the couch where he always sat with Matt or, as I liked to call him under my breath, the sperm donor.

  Charlie was too young to be so mature. Too sincere to be so sad.

  I swallowed my tears and headed to the door, forcing myself to breathe even though every inch of me wished I could just crawl into a hole and never come up for air. Matt was a dark void I couldn’t escape. A mirror I was constantly forced to stare into because in him, I saw myself in a fragment of mistakes. In choices. Every one of them changing the girl I was into the woman I became without any sort of forewarning.

  His hand was lifted when I opened the door. He still looked like he did in college. Wild, hard-edged eyes. Lips that looked like they had never tasted a smile.

  There was something about hitting rock bottom that introduced one to oneself. Matt was my rock bottom. What I learned from it is that when it comes to bending backward and taking crap from others, I was as flexible as Gumby.

  Matt’s eyes formed into slits the moment they landed on me. “About time, Andrea.”

  I cringed at how he said my name. Like he knew me inside and out. I’d never be able to scrub that feeling away.

  He gave me a once over, gaze stopping on my exposed midriff and cleavage as he clucked his teeth. “Desperate times calls for desperate measures… huh, Andrea?” He licked his lips in a cocky manner, eyes drinking me in. “You know, the offer still stands. I’d be more than willing to take you back. I didn’t forget. We’re magic in bed.”

  “And my answer’s still the same—I’ll pass.” I stepped back and opened the door wider, imagining punching him square in the jaw. Reveling in the grimace that followed my rejection.

  He entered like he owned the place, eyes moving over every personal piece of space. Skimming his finger over the top of a picture frame hanging on the wall, he then pushed the books sticking out on my bookshelf back in as he moved toward the living room.

  I could already tell we were getting the asshole side of Matt. There was never a middle ground. He was either enraged and bitter, or as remorseful as he could be. The latter side usually came after one of his catastrophic outbursts, when he knew he had to hand the power back over long enough to win my compliance.

  Every time I tried to approach him with strength and reserve, he always found a way to break what little strength I had left, and so, the cycle continued.

  Charlie looked up from The Weather Channel and scooted over. “Hey.”

  I moved past them and into the kitchen to make Charlie a quick meal before Julia, my neighbor, arrived. She was a godsend in my life. A tender, yet stalwart presence that was just a few short steps across the hallway. When I had to close at night, she watched over Charlie. Her husband died shortly after Charlie and I moved into the small complex. We brought her dinners when we could and just fell into claiming her as one of our own.

  There was a small moment of silence, and I couldn’t help but peek over the bar.

  Matt’s voice went flat as he glared at our son. “Hey… what?”

  His face was angular and sharp without a hint of kindness to his eyes. I didn’t know what I had ever seen in him. Why I’d ever let myself fall into his bed.

  Because he was exactly who your mother wouldn’t approve, I thought, shaking my head.

  More words surfaced. Puncture me so I can bleed my mistakes.

  “Hey, Dad,” Charlie corrected, the word sounding awkward. He grabbed a throw pillow and hugged it to his chest.

  My finger began to move, scribbling out a thought my head couldn’t hang onto. Fucker.

  Matt wore a winning smile as he settled into the couch, throwing his arm over the back so he could keep his eyes on Charlie and me. “That’s better. How has your day been?”

  “Good.”

  “Just good? Your mama treating you right?”

  Charlie looked over the couch at me, eyes pleading.

  “Don’t look to her, boy,” Matt cut in, voice rising. “Is she making you act like this? She’s always been controlling and a little on the—”

  I was already around the bar, carrying the glass of water Matt always requested
when he visited. “Here’s your water,” I said, shoving it in his face.

  He took it and gave me his usual pissy look, like he was about to chew me up and spit me out.

  I cleared my throat and straightened my shoulders, inhaling courage. “Matt, Charlie is about to eat dinner with Julia. I have to head to work. Use the time we’ve agreed on to have an actual conversation before you have to leave.”

  A slow, burning smirk that sent cold shivers up my spine crossed his face. He regarded me as if I were an animal he’d yet to mount on his wall of successions. One he’d soon capture with enough patience.

  I tried not to squirm.

  He took a long sip. Set the glass on the coffee table. “Good to see you’re still pissed off at the world. Can you please head back to the kitchen and finish, so I can enjoy the time I’m allowed? ‘Cause we can take this back to court if you’d—”

  Matt’s words trailed off when I looked at Charlie. I frowned an apology to him, wanting to tell him so many things. How sorry I was for getting us into this mess. How all men didn’t act like this.

  Charlie nodded and offered a small, encouraging smile. He was always so perceptive.

  When Matt’s lips stopped moving, I headed into the kitchen. Cursed under my breath when I noticed the water boiling over. “Shit, shit, shit,” I said as I moved the noodles into the strainer, burning the edges of my fingertips in the process.

  Darkness swells inside me.

  It drips from my fingertips.

  Bleeds from my eyes.

  There was a light knock on the door followed by a, “Hello?”

  “Hey, Julia. Come in. I’m just finishing up,” I said as I poured the noodles back into the pot and added the cheese and some milk. A few minutes later, I set a small bowl on the counter alongside a plate of chicken nuggets, apples, and a cup of chocolate milk. Charlie’s favorite things. It was what I always made for him when he had to see Matt.